Sunday, September 3, 2017

The Good: Nothing!The Bad: Expensive, Limited shelf life, Terrible flavor, Not overly nutritious or filling, Poor aftertasteThe Basics: Larabar Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Bars are not at all what they claim to be like and not worth trying.

My local grocery store has a truly awesome promotion. Every week, the store provides its loyal customers with a freebie. Last week, the free item was a Larabar Fruit & Nut Bar. I eagerly clipped the digital coupon and picked out a Larabar Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Bar to enjoy.

I, alas, did not enjoy the Larabar Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Bars.

Larabar Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Bars do not taste at all like the promised chocolate chip cookie dough and they were an incredible disappointment, even free. Perhaps the best possible statement on Larabar Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Bars is that my wife refused a second bite of the bar and in her refusal, she noted, "that thing brought a tear to my eye!" No food ought to do that.

Basics

Larabar is a health food company and the Larabar Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Bar are the first product I have tried by the company.

Each Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Bar is in a 1.6 oz. bar that is foil-wrapped. Each bar represents a single serving and the Snack Bars are each 1 1/4” wide by 9/16” thick by 3 1/8” long Snack Bar that is unsurprisingly breakable or squishable. A box of Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Bars contains five bars. Each bar looks like a compressed nut bread.

Ease Of Preparation

Eating Larabar Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Bars is simple. After removing the foil wrapper, simply pull out the bar and stick it in your mouth. There is no particularly complicated equation to eating this snack; it is an entirely ready-to-eat food!

Taste

Unwrapping the Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Bar, the consumer is greeted with a vaguely fruity aroma. There is a metallic scent that combines with the awkwardly fruity scent in the bouquet.

In the mouth, the Larabar Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Bar tastes fruity and sour. There is a vague, only instantaneous, flavor of chocolate before the flavor finishes like dates. These bars taste mostly like dates, but do not taste at all like cookie dough.

The dried fruit flavor remains as a fairly unpleasant aftertaste in the mouth well after the last of the bar is consumed.

Nutrition

Larabar Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Bars are intended as a snack bar and they are good on that front. Each 1.6 oz. Larabar Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Bars represents a single serving and they are fairly nutrient-filled. Made primarily of cashews, dates and semisweet chocolate, the ingredient list is made of entirely recognizable ingredients. These bars were produced on equipment that processes nuts, so people with nut allergies need to be concerned. The chocolate in the Larabar Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Bars does not include milk, so they are Vegan-compliant. They are gluten free and the Larabar Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Bars are marked as Kosher.

Larabar's Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Bars have 210 calories, 100 of which are from fat. A full serving represents 15% of one's RDA of saturated fat and they are cholesterol-free. Surprisingly, they are comparatively low in sodium with only 55 mg (2% RDA) per serving and there are 4 grams of protein to be had by eating a full bar. These are a significant source of Copper (20% RDA), Magnesium (15% RDA), and 10% each of Iron and Phosphorus.

Storage/Cleanup

As a healthy snack, Larabar Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Bar remain fresh so long as they are kept in their wrappers. Our bar had an expiration date of December 12, 2017, so these do not have the best shelf life for a snack of its type. The only real clean-up for the Larabar Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Bars comes from wiping up crumbs.

Overall

Larabar Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Bars are so bad that I cannot find anything redeeming about them to recommend. Anyone hoping for anything even remotely like the promised flavor is only setting themselves up for absolute disappointment.